Funny twist on the Fahrenheit novel. AI Capitalism buys books to burn them.

That is something you just made up. In fact you can only have an antitrust ruling based on law and the current news is that the European Court of Justice dismissed a legal complaint from Alphabet against a prior ruling. So we are not anymore on a level where one could make a political argument. The disrespectful remarks of Mr. Walker are unprecedented. You don't attack courts.

Just the opposite. The court ruled that Claude had the rights to train using books that they bought. The standard now is buying used/surplus books and mass scanning them.

From a nominal flat-panel perspective, yes (gets as high as 6,5x in some parts of the desert southwest). But this isn't a flat panel, it's curved, so your 0-degree-angle values get depressed and your tangential-light numbers get boosted. 5 mi/h and 40mi/day are quite reasonable for the desert southwest.

Obviously you won't get that in, say, Reykjavík ;)

I do agree that for whatever use a simple left-right axis is (obviously politics is vastly multidimensional) "left vs. right" is a circle, not a horseshoe. You look at people like Greenwald, Assange, etc and it's easy to see how people loop around the back end.

Basically toward the centre you tend to have the attitude of "the fundamental system is not wrong, but we need to fix X and Y" (just with disagreements over what is right, what is wrong, and what the fixes are). Whereas the more polarized you get to the left and right, the more convinced you are that everything is wrong and it doesn't just need fixes, it needs to be torn down and rebuilt in some new glorious utopian form. So as you approach the backside, you have some unifying attitudes of hating the country and global systems, more prone to supporting demagogues, anti-democratic tendencies, militarism, demonization of the centre (usually under the mistaken belief that the centre actually supports them, whereas actual centrist views are represented only by oppressive minority), etc. The enemies of your country get treated as heroes (for example, the like of both the far-left and far-right of Russia), even when they not only want to see your country destroyed, but are actually ideologically quite different from you. Also, misogyny often starts to creep in through the backdoor of militarism and demogoguery.

Certain sides may be more prone to certain aspects - for example, the right, with its love of guns, is usually an easier slide into militancy, whereas the left, coming from having been in the opposition during the Cold War, usually has an easier route into hating the country, for example. But there gets to be enough unifying aspects on the backend between the far-left and the far-right that some people can swing all the way around.

It sounds like you said it is simultaneously far left and far right?

This is so weird. I haven't visited the site the early Afghan War, maybe early Iraq War era, but I remember it being rather US-jingoistic, pretty right wing? And the site tilt was pretty heavily "white American male" not a famously left-wing demographic.

Meh, I knew of Fark back when all that was at the site was a single photo of a squirrel with large genitals.

I used to play on the mud Three Kingdoms in the mid '90s, and Drew was a Wizard (admin) there (named "Cletus"). When Fark became a link aggregator, I used to visit for the Photoshop contests (then ended up drifting off to Worth1000 when that became a thing). I'm not surprised that he ended up launching a porn site, because, well, Drew, but they launched a TV service that ended up getting gobbled up by Adult Swim? Weird.

Crazy to see all of the stuff that's happened with the site since I left; it entirely dropped off my radar.

Actually, the biggest reason that adoption rates are much, much higher in Australia (despite lack of infrastructure), is that Australia has access to less expensive vehicles imported from China and SK.

The US, otoh, is too busy trying to protect its legacy automakers, who, much as they did in the 70s, decided to ignore trends and continue to sell oversized, overpriced, gas-guzzling vehicles for as long as they could convince the American market to buy them.

"You presume they have the available funds to update the household. It's an easy thing for early adopters who tend to be wealthier. Its another things for the mass market that is more budget conscious. And may also live in older homes that may need some modernization for the charger installation."

Level one charging can in fact be sufficient for those with commutes less than or equal to the national average. It even works for longer commutes to "top off" the battery during the week and hitting the afore-mentioned Walmart or other charger on the weekend while shopping.

"What is “local” is different in the US and EU.."

Again, you focused on the EU while ignoring China and Australia. Australia, in particular, almost exactly mirrors the US in regard to size and driving patterns. But again, local is local. The average commute in the US is 27min. It's 25min in the EU. Australia takes 63.7 minutes! (And before you start on transit, driving is the still most common way to get to work in Europe, with 59% of EU workers using private cars as their primary mode of transportation,)

"They’ve done far better with the public infrastructure required "

Nope. The United States has a significantly more extensive and robust public charging infrastructure than Australia. The US benefits from a massive rollout of Tesla Superchargers open to all EVs, billions in federal NEVI (National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure) funding, and rapid deployment of high-voltage (800V) stations by networks like Electrify America and Ionna.

Your arguments are a couple of years out of date, and again keep focusing on how we're so "different" from the rest of the world.

We're not that exceptional.

Here's some example code of a "wrong" program that is 100% valid:

// well-formed code; no compiler will flag an error
int sum_two_numbers(int a, int b)
{
        return a-b;
}

Is it faster? It sounds really tedious and error-prone to me. If someone were to suggest I quit writing code and instead spend the rest of my career supervising the intern as he writes code for me to review and correct, I'd feel the same way about that.

As an EV owner, I have to disagree with most of what you said.

The U.S. driving pattern also isn’t nearly as unique as it’s often portrayed. Like Europe, most driving consists of commuting, errands, and local trips. Roughly 90% of Americans live in urban or suburban areas, and only a minority take multiple long-distance road trips each year.

Charging infrastructure has improved enormously in just the past few years. Companies like Shell and Walmart are building networks alongside Tesla, and even my local Walmart in the Midwest has chargers. Chargers continue to get faster, but even today’s charging times often line up with the rest stops or meal breaks I’d be making on a road trip anyway.

About two-thirds of U.S. households own their homes, giving them access to some form of home charging. The biggest challenge remains apartment dwellers, where charging infrastructure still lags. That’s a legitimate issue, but it’s an infrastructure problem, not a flaw inherent to EVs.

And it’s worth noting that EV adoption has surged in countries like China and Australia, the latter having driving distances and population distribution that are often compared to the U.S.

I’m just tired of hearing that America is somehow “special,” and that technologies and solutions working successfully in much of the rest of the world are uniquely destined to fail here.

the vehicles start looking more like a wingless airplane than a car.

And what does the company's name mean? ;) (Hint: it's Greek)